


The Devil and the Deep Blue

by Maiden_of_Asgard



Category: Prospect (2018)
Genre: Captive/Captor, Desert Island Fic, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hiding, On the Run, Prisoner of War, Space Pirates, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, Uneasy Allies, space western
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:42:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23290387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiden_of_Asgard/pseuds/Maiden_of_Asgard
Summary: On your first assignment from the Fleet to conduct a negotiation with the settlers on a remote world that’s been assessed as rich with resources, you’re taken prisoner and sold off to mercenaries at the forefront of a fuel boom on a planet far out in the Reach.You escape, wounded, and end up in the clutches of a shifty prospector with a deceptively-friendly smile and uncertain intentions.
Relationships: Ezra (Prospect)/Reader, Ezra/Reader
Comments: 10
Kudos: 58





	The Devil and the Deep Blue

You’re starting to worry that you aren’t all that great at your job.

_ First assignment from the Fleet, _ you think morosely, resting your head against the grimy little viewport window in the containment unit,  _ and I’ve already ruined my prospects. _

Heading out into the Reach so shortly after graduation from the Academy had been exciting. It was heavily implied that your father’s elevated status following the Re-Establishment was partially responsible for you being assigned to an exploratory team so quickly, but you didn’t let the gossip and whispers of your teammates bother you too much.

You have to work with what you’ve got. It isn’t your fault that you have advantages, and you were  _ certain _ that you were ready to head out into the field, despite your relative youth and inexperience.

Mother hadn’t wanted you to leave; if she’d had her way, you would’ve moved back to the Ephrate, taken some cushy, meaningless governmental position, and waited for her to find you the perfect man to marry, someone with  _ class _ and  _ good-standing  _ and everything else she found so damnably important. Your father’d had to talk her into it; when you left to start on the journey, you still hadn’t managed to decide whether or not you should be proud of the fact that part of his reasoning was that you were ‘impossible to tame.’

The task had seemed wonderfully exciting. There were squatters claiming rights to a world deemed rich with potential resources on a moon far out in the Reach, and you were to be part of the negotiation team. You’d been cocky and sure of yourself, ready to make a name out on the galactic frontier…

And then everything fell apart, and like a mouse swatted by Kevva’s heavy hand, your fate was thrown an entirely new path, battered and bruised and seemingly hopeless.

The settlers hadn’t taken well to the prospect of law and order from Central reaching all the way out to their wild, resource-rich hideaway, and they’d attacked without warning in the middle of negotiations that were supposed to be peaceful. Half of your troop had been killed immediately, and several others had died trying to escape days later, when your captors tried to move you to a ship to transport you to some unknown destination.

You hadn’t been willing to test your luck against a row of men with throwers, primed and ready to shoot you down, so you’d gritted your teeth and allowed them to shove you onto the ship, but as the days pass by, you wonder if that was the right decision. A quick end might’ve been preferable to whatever’s waiting for you out there in the darkness of space.

The descent, when the ship finally enters the atmosphere at your eventual destination, is the worst you’ve ever experienced. Alone in the containment cell by yourself, you have to haphazardly belt yourself down with loose bits of luggage straps, praying that there’s something left of you by the time the door is opened.

Your head smacks against the wall, and you curse, spots flashing behind your eyelids. They should’ve kidnapped a better pilot or two, while they were at it.

There are more rough, battered men waiting when you’re dragged out into the sunlight, but you barely pay attention; the landing pad is floating on a vast, deep-blue ocean, rocked by only very gentle waves. Your heart is in your throat. You’d hoped for somewhere familiar, somewhere you’ve studied on your maps, but you have absolutely no idea where they’ve brought you.

“How old?” one of the men asks. He’s unfamiliar, and like the men around him, he wears loose, stained linen clothing with some kind of scaled armor overneath. 

The man holding your elbow shakes you. “Answer, girl,” he says. “How old are you?”

Glaring, you clamp your jaw shut. You’ve got an exceptionally bad feeling about this latest turn of events. 

The man in armor grunts in irritation. “Name, then?”

“Central Aeronautics Fleet Number Seven-Two—”

“That’s not a name.”

“It’s all I’m going to tell you,” you reply, your chin held high. 

The man slaps you across the face. You’ve been in combat training, and you’ve now been in actual combat, and it’s still the first time that  _ anyone _ has struck you like that. You hiss. 

“She’s a Chief Inquisitor’s daughter,” the man holding you says. “We found her clearance token on their ship.”

“Well, we’ll take her, then. We need collateral. With the fuel load we’re projecting here, Central will have rats just like her come crawling out here as soon as they catch wind of it. How much?”

When they start negotiating over your value, you don’t pay attention; you’re busy assessing the mercenaries who are attempting to purchase you, looking for a way to escape. They’re heavily-armed, but their weaponry is mostly primitive. A few older-model throwers are in the mix, but many of them carry simple knives and spears.

You turn to look out over the horizon. Blue stretches as far as you can see, but there are some tell-tale smudges where the sky meets the water, and you can only hope that they indicate land. You’re so distracted that you don’t even notice what final price they settle on, which is a bit of a disappointment. You’re kind of curious to know how much they deemed you worth.

The mercenaries drag you into a shoddy metal raft. One of them has to kick the engine to get it working, and you’re sorely tempted to criticize them, but you manage to hold your tongue. If there was ever a time to act demure and cooperative, this is likely it. You need for them to lower their guards, or else you’ll never have a chance to escape. 

“Where are we going?” you ask instead, keeping an eye on the throwers aimed at your chest. 

“Shoals,” one of the men says.

You don’t like the way he’s looking at you, and you cross your arms. “And I’m a hostage.”

“Something like that.”

The answer doesn’t soothe your nerves. 

The sandy shoals first appear as a lightening of the shade of the water, indicating sharply-decreasing depth. The ramshackle base they’ve constructed sticks up from a large sandbar that’s entirely covered by at least half a meter of water, which you have to slog through once you’ve disembarked from their raft. 

You have to climb a narrow ladder up onto the metal decking of the little elevated village, and when you reach the top, you’re disappointed to discover that the view is just as hopeless; there’s water everywhere, and while the shoals seem to extend far into the distance, you have no idea if they’ll get you near any of the faraway smudges that  _ might _ be solid ground.

Your arrival stirs interest in the inhabitants of the shoals. “What have you got there, Ivan?” a newcomer asks, leaning heavily against his spear. 

The man that you assume is the leader looks down at you, smiling unpleasantly. “A pretty little lady who happens to be a Chief Inquisitor’s kid,” he says. “And she’s in… what was it?”

“Central Aeronautics Fleet—”

“Right, that. Lucky, isn’t it?”

“Well,” a different man says, “can’t really use her for hauling, can we? Tiny thing.”

Spear-man laughs. “Didn’t get her for hauling, mate.”

That decides it; you’re running tonight, even if you end up drowning out in the Deep Blue. Whatever they ‘got you for,’ you aren’t going to stick around to find out. You chew your lip, trying to guess how long it’ll be before the sun sets. You’ll have to hope for total darkness, or close to it, because they’ll be able to see you clearly as you flee across the shoals.

You’re shoved into a rusty metal shed without much fanfare, and you close your eyes and breathe deeply, making a valiant attempt at clearing your mind. The smudges in the distance, if they’re land,  _ might _ have terrain that provides some sort of shelter. 

It isn’t much of a plan, but you’ve got to work with what you have. 

A weapon is a clear necessity. You try to pry some loose bits of scrap metal or shards of weathered wood from the walls of the shed, but you only get a splinter for your troubles. It’s an infuriating endeavor, and you grit your teeth and bide your time, watching through the cracks in the wall as the sun descends. 

It hasn’t been dark for very long when you hear footsteps approaching, and you fight back your panic; you aren’t ready to make your move, but if that’s what it takes, then that’s what you’re going to do. You hide in the shadows, and when one of the mercenaries steps into the hut looking for you, you throw yourself at him, wrapping your arms around his neck.

At first, the sharp pain in your abdomen doesn’t even register, but you let go of him, gripping the handle of the tiny shiv buried in your side. “Shit,” you hiss, and you don’t stop to ponder it too closely before you yank it out and cut his throat, clasping your hand to your side to staunch the blood.

_ Only a flesh wound,  _ you tell yourself, your lips already going numb.  _ Only a flesh wound.  _

You’re pretty sure the mercenary is dead, but you take a moment to double-check, and then you wrest the thrower from the holster on his back, trying to resist the urge to scream. The holster would make things much easier, but the body is too heavy. You can’t waste any time. 

You roll down your undershirt to make a crude sort of makeshift bandage, then you pull on your sweater and jacket and creep out the door, holding your breath. Firelight flickers in one of the large huts on the end of the platform where their rafts are located, and you curse again; there’s no chance you can get to one and get it started before they catch you.

That leaves running. You practically throw yourself off the platform and into the shoals; the sand and the salt in the disturbed water stings, but you’re supposed to be able to deal with pain, so you don’t allow yourself to look at your wound and choose to pretend that it isn’t really there. 

Running knee-deep in water atop wet sand is nearly impossible, you quickly discover, and the waves seem rougher at night, though there’s fortunately no moon to cast an incriminating light on your escape. You’d only estimate that you’ve made it half a league before you hear the sounds of a commotion carrying clearly over the water behind you, but you  _ think _ you see a tiny speck of yellowish light far off in the distance ahead, so you push relentlessly onwards.

The shoals abruptly end, and you gasp and choke, finding yourself suddenly swimming in water over your shoulders. You roll onto your back and awkwardly swim one-armed, determined to keep a hold on the thrower, since you’re rapidly losing hope that you’re going to manage to avoid another confrontation with the mercenaries. 

You swim, and then you swim some more. All you can see are the stars far above you, tiny and bright. If you die, you wonder if you’ll even notice, or if you’ll just keep drifting off into the stars and darkness, the muted sound of waves filling your ears.

How you make it to land is both a miracle and a mystery, but when you wake up with a faceful of sand and water and a cool breeze ruffling your hair, the first purple-pink of dawn is beginning to creep onto the horizon. Muttering every curse you know, you roll yourself over and somehow manage to sit up, coughing and choking.

You’re still alive. 

The island you’ve found yourself on is populated with thick, wizened trees, their matlike roots extending far out into the sandy shore.  _ Get up, _ you tell yourself, and you struggle to your feet, thankful that there’s nobody around to see you stagger and fall and push yourself up all over again, nearly weeping from the effort alone.

You round a twisted clump of fallen trees and sand, and your heart nearly stops when you come nearly face-to-face with a man. You heft your thrower; it takes both hands, but you can’t possibly hold and fire it while you’re clutching your side.

He isn’t dressed like the mercs, but he has to be  _ some _ kind of trouble to be out on an undocumented world like this one. He’s handsome but scruffy, an interesting little patch of blond in his dark hair. It doesn’t miss your notice that he’s got a thrower on his back and a knife strapped to his thigh. You don’t know what to make of him, and your hands tremble.

“That is an  _ impressively _ large thrower for such a diminutive wielder,” he says. “But if you would kindly consider—”

“Be quiet,” you tell him. “Hands in the air.”

He raises his hands, a wry smile on his lips. “Forgive me for making bold assumptions, little bird, but I would venture to guess that you are in need of immediate assistance.”

You follow his gaze and curse; the blood has soaked through your sweater and makeshift bandages. The sight of it brings your dizziness back full-force. You blink. There’s a dark haze encroaching on your field of vision. 

“I—”

“You are, I can further conclude, the missing girl the mercs have been scouring the shoals for all night, aren’t you? If that  _ is  _ the case,” he continues, “then your safe return would earn me a very satisfying reward.”

“I’m not going back to that hellhole,” you hiss. 

The look he gives you is slightly condescending, and despite his relaxed demeanor, there’s a certain tenseness to his posture that gives him away. He’s going to wait until you pass out, and then he’s going to drag you right back to the mercs to trade you off for whatever he can get. 

You pull the trigger, and the man flinches… but nothing happens. “Oh,” you say simply, immensely disappointed by this latest unfortunate turn of events, and then you collapse on the sand. 


End file.
